David Weinstein, director of research at Joseph Charles & Associates, a boutique broker-dealer firm, established the price objective, citing the company's ability to capture one percent of the digital signature market.

Digital signature technology is used to verify information imprints, or signatures, unique to a specific user in secure Internet transactions, much like verifying whether hand-written signatures on paper documents are genuine.

While CustomTracks' digital signature product isn't expected to generate sales until the end of this year,Weinstein said it would be enough to represent one percent of the market.

He points out that Verisign
VRSN, +0.96%
a company that offers a similar product that addresses the same problem of authenticating signatures online, has achieved a one percent market penetration of the booming market and has a market cap of $3.5 billion.

"The market cap represents the perceived future of these businesses," said Weinstein.

Weinstein also notes that CustomTracks is gunning for two other businesses, including an anonymous secure Internet payment system and secure e-mailing, technologies he considers critical to the future of retailing over the Web.

"The growth of e-commerce is predicated on buying items on the Net, but currently 10 percent of Web users buy over the Web because they're afraid of giving up their personal information," he said.

"If you can provide a secure environment for buying merchandise on the Net - then it's realistic to believe that the Net will be the commerce avenue of the future."

Verisign is working with Critical Path
cpth
on a technology to secure e-mails over the Web.

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